Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallGood

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 22 July 2016
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 12 April 2016. The inspection team was comprised of two inspectors and an expert by experience in the care of older people. An expert-by-experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

We looked at all of the key information we held about the service which included notifications. Notifications are changes, events or incidents that providers must tell us about.

We asked the service to complete a provider information return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give us information about the service, what they do well, and what improvements they are planning to make. This was returned to us by the service.

We spoke with ten people who received personal care from the service and eight relatives. We looked at five people’s care and support plans. We reviewed other records relating to the support people received and how the service was managed. This included some of the provider’s checks of the quality and safety of people’s care and support, staff training and recruitment records. We spoke with the management team, including the registered manager, and eight staff. We also spoke with three health and social care professionals during the inspection and a further four by telephone following our visit.

We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.